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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| From Trinidad to Mosul: Why the Caribbean island's young set sail for ISIS territory |
| 2019-01-10 |
| [The National] To many, it's incredible that Imam Yasin Abubakr has not been jailed, sent to the gallows, or quietly bumped off. A protege of Libya's late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, over the years the Islamist leader has been charged with everything from treason and murder through to overthrowing a government. Yet the 77-year-old cleric is not some Middle East insurgent who's somehow stayed one step beyond the law. Instead, he preaches openly from a mosque on the Caribbean island of Trinidad ‐ a place more known for reggae and rum than calls to prayer. The laid-back paradise of the tourist brochures is not one Mr Abubakr recognises, however. A black Muslim convert, he embraced Islam back in the 1960s, convinced that centuries of Christianity had done little for Trinidad's African slave descendants. In the 1970s, his self-styled religious sect, the Jamaat Al Muslimeen, forged links with Gaddafi's Libya, which was then courting radical movements worldwide. But far from simply reading the late dictator’s Little Green book, he took its revolutionary rhetoric literally ‐ launching an armed coup in which his sect took Trinidad's cabinet hostage for six days. That was back in 1990, since then he has mellowed somewhat. Today, the only man ever to stage an Islamist coup in the Western hemisphere warns his followers against the politics of the gun ‐ especially if it tempts them to more radical groups like ISIS. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 Isn't Trinidad where obama was dumping GTMO detainees? |
| Posted by: newc 2019-01-10 16:06 |